v0.2! now it feels like it's getting somewhere lol

Lots of new features! (Some of which was already mentioned in the last devlog). This will be a dump of info for me and probably other devs out there that use GameMaker.

A menu system is now in place! This works off of a few scripts that are attached to an object, which I think is a good way to handle menus from now on in future projects. A set-up script handles the creation of much needed variables, including the options to choose from and which of those options is currently selected. In the Step Event, a script handles the selection of those options and additionally handles what happens when an option is selected. This can be almost anything, such as toggling on/off values or moving to a new room. Finally, the draw event handles the display of those options and the cursor. It's still messy since all of that isn't in an actual script, but because it's not it allows me to alter what is displayed for each option, such as making it display music as "Music: On" and "Music: Off".

Online High Scores have been implemented, but most likely temporarily. This is done using a tutorial found here: https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/online-highscores.4291/#post-34322. It's very good for what I consider a temporary solution for player interaction, and has definitely created some fun discussions between my friends.

The biggest feature I think that took the most work was the Costume System. This system allows me to load external sprites into a global array that stores all the sprites, which can then be called on at any moment to swap sprites on the fly. Because of the way this works, it can easily be adjusted to load sprites from any source location, which can possibly lead to modding support to allow players to load in their own costumes. As of now, there are a total of 5 costumes to find and unlock!

Some new adjustments as well!

• Grabbing a block will now align the player to the block's axis when it can. This makes jumping upwards from below a block being destroyed much easier!
• Points were adjusted so that more variables come into play when getting a score. Before, only the small hearts gave points, which made defeating some enemies not worth the time. Now, touching the Love Tic and defeating enemies award points!
• The player is awarded with less time the more they've touched the Love Tic. At the beginning, the Love Tic awards about 5 seconds for every touch, but slowly dwindles to around only 2.5 seconds. Knowing this, it's probably worth it to stall a bit so you don't accidentally overshoot the cap of 15 seconds!

Beyond that, there were a few bugs I managed to squash thanks to the help of my playtesters!

• There was some weird bug regarding the player's hook defeating the shrimp enemy, which is hard to recreate and thus hard to really test for. I haven't seen this bug since I've changed how this collision works, so hopefully it was just due to the hook trying to reference the enemy instance when it didn't exist.
• Enemies would spawn in the ground if structures were to rise from it. I don't know why I didn't restrict this from happening earlier, but now enemies only spawn when the structures come in from the left or right side.
• There was a very rare bug that i could never reproduce, but hooks will now destroy themselves if for whatever reason they were able to go offscreen.

Finally, there's some things I NEED to change for the next update!

• The Love Tic can get itself in a situation where it's impossible to reach, namely when it's at the top of the screen and there's no blocks in the vicinity to hook onto to reach it. I need to go about making a test case for this so that players don't feel cheated.
  • To build on this, the Love Tic somehow manages to change its hitbox somehow. I have NO idea how or why it does this, but this can be easily seen when its on the edges of the screen. Not really a gamebreaker but it's definitely something to fix.
• Some of the unlockable costumes have very hard and/or specific requirements. I might need to add a hint for each costume.
• As of now, there's very little that gets into the player's way of reaching the Love Tic, besides the occasional enemy or block. I plan to add more to the game in order to make runs feel a little more spicy, with the first of this being Traps. Traps will replace some blocks in every structure, so traversing them now becomes something to worry about.

That's all for this post! Until next time!